A Test for Tiredness, and the Science of Motorcycling

Physiologist Samuele Marcora is exploring the physiology of motorcycling from London to Beijing

How tired are you right now? And how does that compared to how tired you were yesterday, or the day before? It's not an easy question to quantify – but this online test from an exhibit put on by the Wellcome Trust in Britain runs a quick assessment in two minutes that gives you a number. It's a very, very simple test that checks your reaction time over and over and records the average time. The slower your time, the more tired your brain is. (This is obviously just one specific form of tiredness – it says nothing about, say, how fatigued your hamstrings are.) The test is based on the commonly used "psychomotor vigilance task," though in research settings it would last considerably longer than two minutes.

Anyway, just to get the ball rolling: my best single reaction time so far is 201 milliseconds; my average over two minutes was 237. But I'm going to head to bed now and see if I can beat that score tomorrow...